RAMALLAH, West Bank, 12 February 2004 — Palestinian lawmakers are investigating whether Palestinian-owned companies sold cement to Israel for a huge barrier being built in the West Bank, the head of the team said yesterday.
Palestinians denounce the barrier of concrete and wire as an attempt to grab land they want for a state. Israel says it needs the barrier to keep out suicide bombers like those who have killed hundreds of Israelis during three years of conflict.
Hassan Khreishah, head of the audit committee of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), told Reuters his team would leave for Cairo today to look into the allegations, first made in media reports.
“The delegation will...try to find out whether it is true that several Palestinian companies based in Egypt and Gaza have been sending cement to Israel and whether that cement goes into the building of the wall and settlements,” Khreishah said. The barrier — a razor wire-tipped electronic fence in some places and a towering cement wall in others — has limited Palestinians’ access to fields, schools and neighboring villages.
It has drawn international condemnation because it veers well away from the “Green Line” that marked the boundary before 1967 to loop around Jewish settlements built on land seized by Israel in the Middle East war.
Another lawmaker, Jamal Shati, said there would be strong objections if any Palestinian firms were found to be helping build the barrier or settlements. He said the firms under investigation had “expressed willingness to cooperate”.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei yesterday rejected claims made on Israeli television that a cement company owned by his family provided concrete for Israeli settlements and the Israeli West Bank barrier.
“I invite you and I invite the people who said this to come and check on the ground,” Qorei told reporters in Rome. “At base this is a report that is not even worth the ink it was written with.”
Qorei comments were his first since Israel’s Channel 10 TV reported Tuesday that the Al-Quds Cement Company — owned by Qorei’s family — has been providing the materials to help build the barrier.
